1

Chaos Theory, Evolution and Creation

By Dennis Murphy

25 April 2010 Updated 11 July 2011

Copyright 2010 Dennis Murphy

Table of Contents
The Scientific view of the Universe and Life ............................................................... 3 The views of individual scientists ................................................................................ 3 Darwins ideas of the evolutionary process are the scientific equivalent to Newtons ideas on gravity a good beginning, but a long way to go .......................................... 4 Charles Darwin and his ideas ....................................................................................... 6 Descent from a common ancestor ......................................................................... 6 Natural selection ................................................................................................... 7 Free will ....................................................................................................................... 9 Self-organising systems? Or do we need a Special Creation? ............................... 11 The conflict between religion and society ................................................................. 11 Is evolution consistent with Genesis? ........................................................................ 11 Snowflakes, salt and sugar - Crystals that self-organise and self-assemble............... 12 Increases in information in the self-organized and self-assembled entity ................. 14 The original DNA molecules an example of self-assembly.................................... 16 A question that must be asked .................................................................................... 19 Did God need a special act of creation for each different living organism? ........... 21 How many special creations would have been required? .......................................... 21 Gods mechanism for creating huge diversity from a common ancestor ................... 22 The concept of Chaos ................................................................................................. 23 What happens when we repeatedly carry out a given procedure? ............................. 24 A picture of an iterated system and what do we mean by a strange attractor? .... 26 What does it mean to say that something is a fractal? ............................................... 28 Generating a fractal .................................................................................................... 30 The fractal iteration formula as the genome of an organism .................................. 31 Observations of the Natural World ............................................................................ 32 Animals that undergo radical changes to their bodies during their lifetime .............. 32 Have you ever wondered how the shape of all living things comes about? .............. 33 Fractal mathematics as the mechanism that controls shapes in the natural world ..... 34 Similarity with the natural world and the fractal images of the Mandelbrot Set ....... 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Scientific view of the Universe and Life

Or How do scientists view this question in light of their personal beliefs and exactly what do they say about the origins of life Do the ideas of the science community contradict the Biblical account of creation? This is too large of a question to be answered in one hit. We need to break it down into the views of science as a body and scientists as individuals. The question of whether science as a community agrees with the Genesis account of creation will be answered in a later chapter (The Genesis account of creation). The views of individual scientists Individual scientists are people just like anybody else. Apart from their work in science they hold a great variety of personal belief systems. They are Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, many other religions, humanists, agnostics (dont know), atheists as well as really dont care The proportions of each belief system within the science community would almost certainly be much the same as the proportions of those beliefs throughout the rest of the wider community. It is against this backdrop that we have to try and see the motivations of all the people who make up the science community. At a personal level many scientists hold various religious views. All of this group will have some form of belief of how the world was created. However they dont or shouldnt allow these beliefs to influence their scientific work. A professional scientist will follow the science wherever it goes with the assurance that whatever is discovered will simply deepen their understanding of how God really created the universe and all that is in it. A good example of this is the furore that Galileo created in the Catholic Church around 400 years ago when he published his findings that supported the ideas of Copernicus who said that the sun was at the center of the solar system and the earth rotated around the sun not the other way round as had been believed up until that time. As a result of that controversy, today everybody has a much deeper view and understanding of the grandeur of the universe. Religious scientists know that whatever the findings in the current search for the origins of the universe and all the current controversies in the end, the final picture that emerges will enlarge our understanding of our origins and increase our awe at the complexity and intellect of the God who created it all. The important point is that religious scientists dont seek to confirm their pre -existing ideas. They understand that unless they follow the scientific method of trying to disprove their own hypotheses, then they run the very real risk of putting themselves in the position of the Catholic Church when it opposed the evidence of Galileo. In this case they end up rejecting the truth of creation and leading themselves, and those who look to them for guidance, up a dead-end path. In the expanded version of this book called, From Creationism to the Creation http://www.scribd.com/doc/17052583/From-Creationism-to-the-Creation I explored the Biblical claims that God chooses who He will reveal himself to. In the case of Christian scientists, God has placed in them a basic belief that He created everything. While it is true that science still does not have anywhere near the full answers, at least Christians have a vague idea that God is behind it all. However those scientists who are agnostic 3

4 or atheist have not had this revelation that God created the universe. It is human nature that we all like to have some overall sense of how things are even if we dont know the full details. Somehow agnostic and atheist scientists have got to form an opinion on how everything came into existence in order to fulfil that need to know. In the current scientific state of knowledge that grand idea is that which was proposed by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life and his later book and better known book, The Origin of Species by means of natural selection http://charles-darwin.classic-literature.co.uk/ Darwins ideas of the evolutionary process are the scientific equivalent to Newtons ideas on gravity a good beginning, but a long way to go One critical issue needs to be emphasised at this point, and this understanding is often missed even by a lot of evolutionary biologists. Darwins ideas are the biological equivalent to Newtons ideas on gravity. Both of these learned gentlemen describe what is observed to happen in nature. However, neither of them give or attempt to give an explanation of the deep mechanisms that underlie their observations. In Newtons case this was left to Einstein to explain the deeper aspects of gravitation and is now being expanded with the ideas of quantum gravity which in turn will in the future give way to an even deeper understanding of gravity, space, time and mass. In the case of Darwin we have a very curious situation. Even very prominent evolutionary scientists such as Richard Dawkins has openly stated on TV that he believes that all the big questions in science are now close to being answered. (Excerpt below from interview with Andrew Denton on Australian TV show called The Elders 21 December 2009 transcript available at: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/elders/transcripts/s2757522.htm) ANDREW DENTON: What would you like to live long enough to know the answer to? RICHARD DAWKINS: I'm not a physicist but physicists talk about a theory of everything, talk about understanding those corners of physics, of the universe, of the cosmos, which we still don't yet have a grasp of. And it's not impossible that that will come in the next few decades, even in the next couple of years perhaps . ANDREW DENTON: That concept to me is my small brain is starting to explode thinking about that... RICHARD DAWKINS: Well me too, yes, I mean I agree with that, and I'm pretty pessimistic that I would personally understand the theory of everything. I don't know enough physics or mathematics to do that, but I think if the theory of everything said, we now understand where the laws of physics come from, where the physical constants come from, why there is a universe at all, how it started, if indeed "started" means anything. I think physicists are not far from that now and it may just need one more little push and they might they might be there . It is strange to me that many biologists dont appear to understand that natural selection is simply a mechanism that adapts an organism to an environment. They appear to 4

5 believe that the description of the natural selection mechanism is very close to a full understanding of the complete story of the emergence of life in all its spectacular glory and wonder. They appear to think like many did in the time of Newton, that he had explained gravity with his mechanistic law that described how objects move in a gravitational field. But like many then and still today with biology they dont seem to understand that these simple explanations (e.g. natural selection and Newtonian gravity) only describe what happens, but give no clues as to how or why Even more amazing is the apparent dismissal by many biologists of the question of the nature of, and the emergence of, consciousness and intelligence and its apparent connections to the quantum world. Surely if something as simple as Newtons ideas of gravity have now become enmeshed in the quantum world (quantum gravity) surely something much more complex like consciousness with its observed connections to the quantum world would logically mean that there is much more to discover about life? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind I think that there are very few physicists who believe like Richard Dawkins that they are about to reach the end of physics anytime within the foreseeable future. I agree that life clearly evolved over huge periods of time because thats what the evidence unquestionably shows. In that respect Darwin was correct. However, I have to say that much of the evidence in the writings and utterances of many biologists shows that they have the same limited view of life as many scientists did in Newtons time in regard to gravity. This is a serious shortcoming on the part of those scientists who seem to believe that there are no more big ideas to be discovered yet about the emergence and development of life. It erodes their credibility. In many ways these biologists are just as much fundamentalists in science as many Christians are fundamentalists in their beliefs about the origin of the universe and life. The Creationists take a very simple and nave view of the Bible and the world around them. As a result, their views are discounted by those people who think about the real facts of science. However many fundamentalist biologists are really not a lot different to the Christian fundamentalists. These Darwinian fundamentalists take the relatively simple observations of Darwin and then insist that a simple adaptation mechanism (natural selection) is all that is needed to explain the origin and development of species and complex phenomenon such as life and consciousness. This despite the fact that there is no satisfactory explanation of what life or consciousness is. As an example of what I mean, think about why an animal or a person is alive now but dead a few moments later What exactly is it that changed so that they are dead but was alive a few moments earlier? Think also about the huge intellectual gap that exists between humans and animals. There is still today no real idea of what brings about this intellectual gap. Some people say it is because we are a conscious being But what does that mean in concrete terms? We can all recognise consciousness but so far no one can define it. The evidence of the truth of this statement is simple. If we could actually define and describe consciousness then we could program it into a computer program. Science is currently nowhere near being able to do that But still despite all these currently unanswerable questions we still have some true believers in the Gospel according to Darwin who say, natural selection is the answer to all these mysteries They apparently, dont believe or cant understand 5

6 that there are more big ideas to come before we unravel the m ysteries of life. In the eyes of most critical thinkers they are just as discredited as Creationists as they cling to their primitive and outmoded ideas. The rest of this book will look at Darwins ideas and the attempts by Creationists to undermine them. It will also look at some of the emerging ideas that attempt to explain some of the diversity and shapes of life on the planet Charles Darwin and his ideas I dont think that any single book has created more controversy and confusion than Charles Darwins books on his theories on how life evolved. Darwin himself anticipated and understood the problems that his books were going to throw up and wrote in 1872, "it is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance. This is advice that should still be followed today. It has to be realized that from the day that On the Origin of Species was published even the science community was divided on the claims in it. This situation still exists to this day. It must also be clearly understood that if Darwin came back today he would be hard-pressed to recognise much of his original theory as science has advanced so much since he published the book. One aspect of this is the science of genetics and inheritance as well as the structure of the genome made up as it is with DNA. This new knowledge has given the scientists of today a much better understanding of how the mechanism of natural selection works. Still it was a remarkable insight that Darwin had. Darwins theory rests on two main pillars which he anno unced in his books. They are the ideas that all life has descended from a common ancestor with modification along the way, and the idea of natural selection as being the mechanism of the modification. The concept of natural selection is indisputably correct. Decent from a common ancestor is less certain and is the subject of dispute. Descent from a common ancestor Darwin believed that all present-day life forms have descended from much simpler ancestors. While molecular biology supports this theory up to a point it has a major problem with what is known as the Cambrian Explosion which we will very briefly look at below. Briefly, there are several reasons that science believes that all life forms today have a common ancestor. The two top level reasons are : All known life shares a common biochemistry and genetic code The form of the genetic code is essentially identical for all known life-forms, from single celled organisms such as bacteria to humans. Analysis of the genes of many organisms also provides support for the idea of descent from a common ancestor. As examples, about 97.5% of the genes in both humans and mice are the same. For chimpanzees, we share about 99% of the same genes. The Tree of Life This is a phylogenetic tree diagram that is constructed using genetic information. In biology, phylogenetics is the science of tracing evolutionary 6

7 relationships among various groups of organisms such as different species. The method used is to trace through the molecular sequence in the various genes. It also uses morphological (shape) information, such as all dogs look like dogs and all birds look like birds to help trace out the branches on the Tree of Life. Traditionally, these trees were only constructed using morphological methods that took into account the appearance of the animals in a given type (e.g. wolves, dogs etc.). It is now possible to compare the genetic structures of a line of creatures running back through time. The morphological trees and the genetic trees all produce similar results. This is considered to be strong evidence that all life forms do have a common ancestor. The real problem that arises in the idea of a common ancestor comes from the fossil evidence of what has become known as the Cambrian Explosion. This is a time about 500 million years ago, which lasted for about 40 million years, when the majority of the major groups of animals first appeared in the fossil record. There are fossils that extend back to earlier periods, but the majority first appear during the Cambrian Period. By far and away the majority of these life forms occur in the ancient seas. It is generally accepted that no significant land plants existed at this time. However it is probable that there were simple precursor life forms to complex plants such as fungi, algae and lichens on the land. These fossils represent the grouping of animals based on the general body plan of each group of animals that eventually made its appearance in later time periods . However it must be noted that these fossils are only the precursors of animals and most plants today. For instance you will not find a fossil of a rabbit or an elephant only the distant precursor forms that eventually led to these later animals. This is an important statement as some groups today specifically state that fossils of all animals or at least similar animals appeared in the Cambrian Era fossil records. This sudden explosion of life forms during this period is the single greatest problem for the idea that all life came from a single common ancestor. The existence of these fossils was known by the middle 1800s and Darwin himself recognized the problem and said that it was one of the main objections to his theory. Even today, there is still great scientific debate on this subject of a common ancestor. In the interest of good science it must be clearly stated that some scientists today are starting to question whether the explosion of fossils during this period is real or whether it just looks as if an explosion of life forms occurred at the time. Only time will give the answer to this question. We will look at this sudden explosion of life in a little more detail in the chapter, Observations of the Natural World and see that this sort of sudden expansion of complexity is very closely related to the concept of fractal mathematics. As that chapter will explain, the natural world is fractal by its very nature. The ideas behind fractal will be explained in the preceding chapter entitled, Did God need a special act of creation for each different living organism? Natural selection Most people when they think of Darwins idea of natural selection think of the saying the survival of the fittest or the the survival of the strongest The idea suggested here is that of a fight between a stronger animal and a weaker animal where the strongest animal wins the battle and probably ends up eating the weaker animal. The 7

8 idea is that there is a constant war and the strong live at the expense of the weak. However this is not what he meant. In order to get the flavour you need to read the actual account in his book. The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection - Page 53 http://charles-darwin.classic-literature.co.uk/ Can it then be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should occur in the course of many successive generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left either a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in certain polymorphic species, or would ultimately become fixed, owing to the nature of the organism and the nature of the conditions. Page 62 Natural selection acts only by the preservation and accumulation of small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being Page 82 But if variations useful to any organic being ever do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance, these will tend to produce offspring similarly characterised. This principle of preservation, or the survival of the fittest, I have called natural selection. It leads to the improvement of each creature in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life; and consequently, in most cases, to what must be regarded as an advance in organisation. Nevertheless, low and simple forms will long endure if well fitted for their simple conditions of life As the quotations above, taken directly from The Origin of Species shows, Darwins concept of the the survival of the fittest is quite different to the savage jungle-like dog-eat-dog idea that creationism casts this expression as. The idea behind natural selection is very simple. Any plant or animal that has a particular characteristic that makes it more successful at surviving in a given environment will be more likely to breed and pass on that heritable characteristic than other less well adapted plants or animals. Over time, the general population will contain more animals or plants that have this desirable characteristic than those who dont. It is an example of Darwins statement (above) This principle of preservation, or the survival of the fittest, I have called natural selection . Hence, over time we will see a change in the species as it adapts to the changing environment around it. Given that the environment has, and is, constantly undergoing changes it would be a very poor design that did not have an inbuilt mechanism that allowed the plants and animals living in it to adapt to changes in their environment. 8

9 Natural selection is at work all around us constantly. However the best known example is the Galapagos finches that Darwin studied on the Voyage of the Beagle (1831 to 1836). During that voyage he visited the Galapagos Islands. On 14 different islands he found finches that although they were similar to other finches on the mainland of South America, about 600 miles to the east all had various changes to their beaks. These changes allowed the birds to take advantage of different food niches on the island. Free will Do we have an absolute unfettered free will so that we can choose whatever we like? Well, clearly we dont! A few examples will hopefully show the truth of this statement. At its basic level the argument on free will comes down to whether the universe is deterministic or not. The idea of determinism is simply that the universe runs on rails. In a case like this the reasoning goes event A causes event B, which in turn causes event C, which in turn causes event D. You can extend this out to as many events as you like. But the essential idea is that the last event in the chain is a direct result of all the preceding events in that chain. The idea can be extended further to include multiple intersecting chains of events that share a common event (say ev ent C in our example above) so that the outcome of the common event is determined by the preceding events in each of the two chains that it forms a part of. The idea can be extended out to infinity with more chains interesting each other and themselves. The end result is that any resulting event anywhere along any of the chains is strictly determined by all the events that preceded them. Once the initial events (and conditions) are set the outcome is already determined for as far down the line as you care to travel. However complex the train of events that we are considering, the system truly does run on rails In the example of a deterministic system talked about in the previous paragraph the critical parameter that determines the outcome of the chain of events is the exact initial conditions that existed at the start of the chain of events. Given that it is normally not possible to be able to determine the exact values (e.g. to an infinite level of precision) of all the factors and parameters then it becomes impossible to determine exactly how any given system will evolve over time because of the phenomenon of what is known as deterministic chaos. The way in which chaotic systems evolve over time is critically dependent on the initial value of its parameters. Under the right circumstances, minute changes, such as a difference of say 0 .00000000001 in the initial value of one of its parameters, can lead the system to evolve into a very different state to that compared to where the initial conditions had not varied by that minute amount. These changes can appear very rapidly. The reasons and details for this chaotic behaviour can be looked up on the internet for those who are interested (e.g. chaos theory). But for now all that is needed is to realize that this sort of phenomenon exists and that it has a very large bearing on whether something is truly random and hence an act of free will or whether it has been determined by things that you are not aware of. An everyday example of deterministic chaos that is presented as a random number generator is the barrel of marbles with numbers on them that are used to generate the winning number in lotteries. The barrel is filled with thousands of marbles with numbers on them the barrel is rotated for a period of time it stops and some method 9

10 is used to select a given marble. It seems random enough after all, nobody can predict what number will be drawn next can they? Well in practice it is what is known as pseudo-random. By this is meant that it appears to be random but in fact it runs on rails The easiest way of looking at this is to run the tape backwards from the point that the final marble is selected from the barrel back to the start of rotation of the barrel. We have all seen this sort of thing done in pictures and it illustrates the principle involved in deterministic chaos. If you could physically rewind the barrel and marbles and could set up the exact same initial conditions in the barrel to an infinite level of precision for all the parameters involved (coefficients of friction of balls and barrel, exact shapes of the balls and barrel and exact positions of the balls relative to each other, rotational speeds, time etc.) then running the process again would produce the exact same ball being picked out. In principle given a powerful enough computer you could calculate exactly which ball would be drawn out. In practice it cant be done but only because our technology (at this time) is not capable of the required precision in the measurement of the exact initial conditions

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

10

11

Self-organising systems? Or do we need a Special Creation?

The conflict between religion and society Religion and the state and society in general have had a long, and for the most part, uneasy relationship throughout the history of mankind. While the details of each instance of the battles between the parties differ, the root of these conflicts remains the same. For all people who believe in some form of god , religion is a personal belief system. The essential underlying idea is that their eternal destiny depends on remaining true to the teachings of their particular religion. This applies irrespective of whatever god they believe in. For the most part, people do not question the opinion leaders in their particular religion or belief system. They are content to accept the conventional wisdom that is taught. Often, religious leaders have their own agenda in any society. These agendas are usually based in some spiritual values. For whatever reasons, these values are often at variance with those of the political leaders, or the society at large. This inevitably leads to the religious organizations being pushed to the sidelines of the society. Sometimes this sidelining is warranted and sometimes it is not. The rights and wrongs of this are not the subject of this discussion. All we are interested in is the fact that the beliefs of religious groups often cause the members of that group to hold a contrary view to that of the general population. More to the point, because these views are often but not always based on the internal feelings (emotions) of the individual member of the group, they are not necessarily based on hard, observable and testable facts. Is evolution consistent with Genesis? Many people who believe in a literal six day creation about six thousand years ago appear to think that belief in Genesis and in science are incompatible with each other. There also appears to be a common belief in both the Christian and non-Christian camps that the science that demonstrates the reality of evolution also proves that there is no God. The reasoning goes that as the process of natural selection in its dayto-day operation does not require the int ervention of a god for it to operate so the world can be explained without using God as the original cause. This reasoning of some people that if evolution is a fact then there is no God is the direct equivalent to those religious and non-religious people who cannot accept that life started independently on this planet. This group insist that life had to have been planted here either by aliens from another civilization, or from meteorites that contained the seeds of life that landed on the earth. For reasons that I simply cannot understand, these groups are apparently unable, or unwilling to understand that far from answering the question of how life started all they have done is to avoid the question altogether. They simply push the question of the origins of life out to a remote point in space and time so that (at this stage) they have no hope of finding an answer. At best it is an intellectually lazy approach. At its worst it is intellectually dishonest because they 11

12 insinuate that it is not possible for life to arise independently on any given planet but they refuse to give any sort of answer as to how life did arise. There are well known laws that govern the operation of the universe. At this stage we are almost certainly not aware of all these laws. If we were, this would mean that we are at the end of science and that is plainly not true. Even if natural selection, and not some other mechanism, is eventually shown to be the mechanism that gives rise to different classes of organisms e.g. trees, dogs, fishes etc. then the process of natural selection is still operating as a law of natural selection. At the law level it is no different to Newtons and Einsteins laws of gravity or the law of conservation of energy that states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant. For reasons that elude me, the if evolution is a fact then there is no God camp apparently dont (or wont) recognise that all the laws that govern the universe came into existence at the instant of creation of the universe. Now science freely admits at this time, that nobody has the slightest idea of exactly what a law is composed of as you cannot pick up a gram weight of law and physically examine it. All you can do is infer that the law exists because you can reliably carry out experiments anywhere in the universe (as far as is known) and consistently predict the outcome on the basis of the law in question. Science also freely admits that nobody has the slightest idea of how a law causes the things that we predict to actually happen. Take Fermat's Principle as an example of the operation of a law. He proposed that a light beam will always travel along a path that ensures that it takes the least time to travel between two points on that path. We experimentally know that it does because all lenses that guide and focus light work on this principle. Much is understood about the mathematical relationships of why this happens but nobody has an answer (at least yet) as to why a photon will al ways obey the law Is there for instance a light beam policeman who enforces this path on each and every individual photon in existence? If there is, then what does the policeman look like and why has he/she/it never been observed? Snowflakes, salt and sugar - Crystals that self-organise and self-assemble Some people have difficulty believing that the many and various life forms that fill the earth, and apart from humans, probably also fill much of the rest of the universe. In particular, these groups have trouble believing that life could have arisen by the operation of the natural laws that govern the universe. But everyday most of us would come into contact with two common materials that self-assemble into their characteristic shapes. These are common table salt which has a cubic structure and common table sugar which has a multi-faceted polygonal shape that is characteristic for particular sugars. This self assembly process is built in by the shape of the individual molecules of the substance. These molecular shapes cause the self-assembly of larger crystals as each molecule packs into the growing structure. Of course there are deeper atomic forces in the atoms that help align all the molecules as well in ways that are not completely understood yet. But the essential point is that these are non-living chemicals that self-assemble into their characteristic shapes purely under the influence of the natural laws. There are many other crystals that do the same.

12

13 Snowflakes are a good example of self assembly that show beautiful and very complex structural shapes and patterns. One example of a snowflake is shown from the website below. This and many more different naturally occurring shapes can be seen at http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals Snowflakes start out life as water vapour in a cloud. As the temperature drops the vapour condenses. If the temperature is low enough the water super-cools that is it drops below the freezing point of water, but is does not crystallise (freeze). In order to freeze it usually requires the presence of a microscopic nucleus particle around which the ice begins to form. This can be anything from other water molecules if the super-cooled water is down to about minus 35C or dust particles, even bacteria in the air if the water temperature is say around minus 1 to 10C. All flakes initially start out as a small hexagonal (6 sided) prism of ice. This is the first critical point in the growing architecture of a snowflake. The hexagonal form is set entirely by the atomic structure of an ice crystal. The atomic structure of each element is entirely determined by the natural laws that define and govern the universe. At a certain point branches begin to sprout and grow from the six corners of the base hexagon. Again, this is not a random process. The growth takes place at the corners because that is the section in the atomic structure of the ice crystal that the natural laws require the new water molecules to attach onto. It is this operation of the basic laws of nature which give the final crystal its basic hexagonal shape irrespective of the infinite variety of shapes that snowflakes have. As the snowflake blows around inside the cloud it moves through different temperature regions as it continues to grow. It is known that the final shape of the snowflake depends on the temperatures at each stage of the crystal growth. But the full details are not completely understood as it is a very complex business. All the six arms grow quite independently to each other under the same apparently random conditions. In the natural world most snowflakes are not totally symmetrical. But in a surprising number of cases you find that all six arms end up looking surprisingly similar. This demonstrates the ability of random events to produce very orderly and complex structures simply by the natural laws self organising molecules into those complex entities. Did this self organization of salt and sugar crystals (and others) and the beautiful and complex shapes of snowflakes come about from pure random chance? Well of course they didnt! Everybody who is familiar with physics understands the basic laws and general process that brings these crystals about. Most people who look at the science understands that the natural laws that brought this self-organising and selfassembly process about are the direct result of the fundamental laws that came into existence at the moment of the creation of the universe. Most people who think deeply about science understand that the existence and fundamental operation of these laws is one of the great mysteries of science today.

13

14 These natural laws are clearly the work of God when He created the universe. Without these laws the universe would not exist, or certainly not in the form that we know and could exist in. God has always used these laws to self-organise and self-assemble all aspects of the natural world. This includes both inert solids as well as biological entities. Increases in information in the self-organized and self-assembled entity The subject of information theory has, as one of its branches, the study of how many bits of information it takes to code a given set of information. As a simple example , we will look at the number of lines of information needed to code (describe) how to draw a square. For simplicity sake we will consider that each line of instructions corresponds to one bit of information. These lines of information would be. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Start at the bottom left hand (LH) corner of the square Draw a horizontal line 100mm long to the right hand (RH) lower corner From the lower RH corner draw a vertical line 100mm long to the top RH corner From the top RH corner draw a horizontal line to the top LH corner From the top LH corner draw a vertical line down to the start position of the lower LH corner.

As the example above shows, we need five (5) bits of information to code the drawing of a simple square. Now look at the picture of the snowflake on the previous page and then think about how many lines (bits) of information would be required to draw that. I have enlarged the picture and looked at all the branches in greater detail. What you find are smaller sub-branches. Without even attempting to describe how to draw that geometric shape, we can confidently assert that it would take many dozens and maybe even hundreds of lines of instructions to explain how to draw the snowflake. This is a critical observation. The information that is coded into the shape of the snowflake is many times greater than the simple rectangle example that we used. It is worth considering how this information that is finally found in the snowflake is built up. 1. The snowflake starts as amorphous (without shape) water vapour in a cloud. 2. It freezes and crystallizes around a microscopic seed of some type or another. The shape of the seed can be anything 3. A small hexagonal ice crystal begins to grow around the seed. At this point the first increase in information occurs as the hexagonal shape has a definite coding that is determined by the natural laws that govern the world. 4. Random changes in temperature in the cloud and random wind velocities and directions and random variations in the water vapour concentrations in the cloud along with the natural laws then combine to continue the increase in complexity of the coded shape of the final snowflake. In the case of a snow flake, we see the natural laws that govern the world take an amorphous (shapeless) patch of water vapour and turn it into a very complex form that has an infinite variety of shapes that finally appear in the countless billions of 14

15 snowflakes that form every year. With crystals such as salt and sugar you see a consistent and regular crystal shape appear as the crystals form out of a pool of shapeless liquid as it evaporates. These increases in complexity hence information content are the direct result of the operation of the underlying natural laws. At this point we need to revisit that idea of a random event that we looked at in the earlier chapter, in the section on Free will. We will also look at this subject of randomness again in a little more detail in the chapter on, Did God need a special act of creation for each different living organism? As is shown in those chapters, there is no such thing as a truly random event at the most fundamental level of nature. It is certainly true that mankind does not have at this time the ability to measure to an infinite level of precision the initial conditions at the instant of the start of the universe. Nor do we have the ability at this time to follow the trail of events back to the instant of the start of the universe when the initial conditions of interest existed. However simply because we dont have the ability to follow this all back does not mean that the universe itself did not have all that information available to guide it as it unfolded. By definition the universe did have the absolutely precise values of the initial conditions. Unless each and every particle and molecule knew what the exact initial conditions are in each and every interaction that it was involved in it would not have been possible for any interaction to have proceeded at all. As an example, think of two billiard balls colliding with each other. The exact path that each ball will follow after the collision is determined wholly and solely and only by the initial conditions that existed at the exact instant of contact between the balls. These initial conditions include such things as: The exact mass of each ball The exact angles between the paths of the two balls in relation to the centers of mass of each ball The exact velocities of each ball The exact geometric shape of each ball in relation to the center of mass of each ball at the point of contact with each other The exact elasticity value of each ball at the point of actual contact The exact position that each ball impacted on the other ball in relation to the two centers of mass of the two balls The exact coefficients of friction that existed on the exact point of contact on each of the two balls The exact coefficients of friction that existed on the exact point of contact on each of the two balls and the billiard table The exact angle that the plane of the table at the point of contact of each ball makes with respect to the local gravitational field The exact value of the local acceleration due to gravity In the initial conditions above, the word exact means to an infinite level of precision. If you could measure all those parameters then you could specify precisely to an infinite level of precision exactly what each ball would do after the collision. We cant do that. However the fact that the balls know exactly what path to follow and what the required velocity is of each ball after the impact is only because they are affected by the exact values of all the parameters listed above as they are operating at the time of 15

16 impact. Although their behaviour seems random, in fact it is precisely controlled by all those factors which if you knew the values, you could precisely compute the behaviour yourself. You can extend this out to include those two balls colliding with other balls that were moving on the table at the same time. Although the resulting paths and collisions of all the balls appear to be totally random they are in fact precisely calculated and predicted by the natural laws. This means that you could in principle predict exactly what each ball will do as their paths and velocities have been programmed in at the instant of the collisions. The point in this is simple! The random events from our perspective were and are anything but random. In a very real sense the universe has run on rails from the instant of the creation. These unbelievably complex and beautiful shapes of snowflakes were programmed in at the very instant of the start of the universe . Not only have individual snowflake designs run on rails since the instant of the beginning of the universe but everything else that you see around you has also run on rails. The original DNA molecules an example of self-assembly At the heart of all life is the genome that determines the shape and functions of each cell in an organism. The genome itself is made from DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) The short DNA segments along the length of the genome that carry the coded genetic information are called genes. From the chemical viewpoint, DNA consists of two long side chains that form the structural backbone that hold the cross chains. These rungs on the ladder are made up of two different molecules of amino acids called bases. Because each rung has two bases they are called base pairs . There are only four different amino acid bases, Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine. The coding of the genetic information is carried by the sequence of these four bases along the length of the entire genome. The latest estimate of the total length of the DNA in a human cell is about three meters long if it was stretched out. It has approximately 220 million base pairs along its total length Just for the moment leave aside the actual number of base pairs along the DNA strand and the complexity that the actual code in the DNA molecule represents. Look instead at the structural complexity of the molecule. It is essentially a long rope ladder where each of the rungs is made up by joining two base pairs of amino acids together and then joining the other ends of the base pair to the main structural side members. The self-assembly of a structure such as this is not anymore difficult and is probably easier than assembling the structure of an intricately shaped snowflake. Self-assembly of molecules relies on two basic mechanisms.

16

17 First, the individual molecules must have sites on them that act as attractors for other molecules that have matching (opposite) attractors. A simple example is a set of small bar magnets that have north and south poles at opposite ends of each of the magnets. As we all know, like poles repel each other (e.g. two N poles or two S poles will repel each other) whereas opposite poles attract each other. (e.g. a N pole and a S pole will attract each other). All chemicals have atomic bond sites of various types on them that act as attractors for other molecules. The second requirement for self assembly is that the molecules must be moving around in random patterns of movement. Over time the molecules will touch in various positions. Whenever they contact at a point of mutual attraction, the molecules will tend to stick together. Over time, more such collisions occur and the molecules grow in size. They have now self-assembled into a much larger compound molecule. To see self-assembly in action all you need to do is make some artificial molecules. You can easily do this by making some small wooden blocks in various shapes such as rectangles, squares, hexagons, triangles, and small cylinders etc. Into the sides of the molecules and the ends of the cylinders, you then drill some small holes into which you insert small weak cylindrical magnets to act as the attractor sites To demonstrate self assembly of a DNA molecule you would also need two longer rectangular strips with holes along one side only of their length into which the attractor magnets can be inserted. When putting the magnets into the holes in the artificial molecules, you need to ensure that one side of the molecule has a north pole facing outward and on the other side of the molecule that you have a south pole facing outwards. This duplicates the atomic structure of real molecules. To demonstrate the self-assembly process all you need to do is first ensure that all the molecules are separated, then the gently shake the tray on which they are sitting so that the molecules all start moving around. Then watch how they begin to selfassemble into the various shapes that are essentially pre-programmed into them by virtue of the individual block shapes and the locations and polarities of the magnets that are set into the sides of the individual molecule shapes. In the real world, the actual shape of the final self-assembled molecule is dependent on both the types of chemicals that are present and the distribution of the attractor and repelling sites on the individual molecules. This self-assembly at the molecular level is a basic everyday occurrence. Whenever you mix two or more chemicals together and a chemical reaction occurs that results in changes to one or more of the original chemicals or the formation of a new compound chemical you are seeing a form of self assembly, or maybe disassembly, taking place In science, self-assembly is generally taken to mean that the self-assembled structure has certain defined properties. These are: The self-assembled structure must have a higher order of organization than the individual components. This can either be in the final shape of the structure or any tasks that the self-assembled entity may be able to perform. In self-assembly, the key bonding forces are generally considered to be the weak interactions (e.g. Van der Waals, capillary, hydrogen bonds) instead of the more "traditional" covalent, ionic or metallic bonds. The weak forces are the ones that

17

18 determine the physical properties of the materials and are the ones that determine the organization of molecules in biological membranes. In self-assembled structures the building blocks are not only confined to atoms and molecules. They can, and do include a wide range of material building block sizes from the atomic scale up to scales that can be described without having to resort to discussing their atomic properties. (mesoscopic) The whole world is a good example of self-assembly. This includes our own bodies which are examples of self-assembly of complex structures out of simpler components. It is not some vague pie-in-the-sky concept. Without self-assembly the universe would just not exist. This is the mechanism that God used in creation. However the deeper foundation of self-assembly are the laws of nature that God put in place at the start of the universe. It is these laws (whatever they are and however they work at the deep fundamental level) that is the guiding mechanism that allows self-assembly to take place. The process of natural selection in evolution could not occur at its deepest level without relying on the process of self-assembly which in turn is not possible without the fundamental natural laws that came into existence at the creation of the universe itself. Having dealt with the relatively minor problem of self assembly we now have to consider the self-organization aspect of the total design of the genome. One of the very real problems that many people have about self-organization is that they see this as saying that there is some sort of intelligence that is do ing the organization This is not what is meant by the expression. The earlier example of the snowflake is a good example of the expression. It has a very self-organised complex shape but neither it, nor anybody else actually made the snowflake. It came about as a direct result of the natural laws operating on the molecules of water that made it up. The snowflake as an entity (non -living and nonknowing) then self-organised its own final shape simply as a result of the fact that its water molecules have a certain shape set by atomic considerations with attractor points at certain positions and this interacted with the conditions it encountered in the cloud where it grew. As I have said earlier, no two snowflakes are exactly the same as each other. They range from fairly similar to completely different to each other. Because over history there have been countless billions and zillions of snowflakes then there will have been a huge number of individual shapes that have been formed just by chance. This then brings us to the next question of how DNA could have formed to start off life in the beginning. After all, I quoted a figure earlier of the human genome having approximately 220 million base pairs along its total length. People say, well how could you get that sort of complexity by random chance? Well the answer is that it would be most unlikely. However that is not how it started. The first living cell (what is life anyway? This is a deep question that still has no answer) was just that, a single very simple cell. The DNA for that cell would have been much shorter. The process of bootstrapping then occurred over billions of years where the world pulled itself up by its own bootstraps (so to speak) from very simple cells into much more complex systems over huge periods of time and absolutely 18

19 countless replications that covered all possible variations. The only variations that survived were those that were suited to the local environment that they found themselves in. The better suited to the local environment the more likely a given cell or organism is to survive and divide or breed and hence pass on its characteristics. By this mechanism we see Darwins principle in action in which each slight variation, if useful to the organism, is preserved by the process of Natural Selection" A common objection to even having a simple cell arise by natural means is that even a simple cell has a huge variety of chemical needs that have to be met in order for a cell to function. The claim is made that the number of bits of information needed to produce a working cell is far too large to have come about by chance. The claim is worth looking at. For the evolutionary scenario to be realistic, experimental evidence will have to be produced that demonstrates a realistic pathway for a cell to arise by natural means. At this stage in the search for the origins of life a realistic pathway has not yet been found. However what needs to be kept in mind is the old saying that, Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence This is the basis of the scientific method of investigation where you are constantly looking for the case which shows that the hypothesis, as it has been formulated, is wrong not looking for cases that confirms the hypothesis, As an example, take the common knowledge about swans that European zoologists believed before Australia had been discovered. They believed that all swans were white, simply because all the swans that they saw were white. There was no shortage of corroborating evidence that all swans are white until black swans were found in Australia. So it is with the search for the beginning of life it hasnt been found yet but that does not mean it wont be. A lot of work is being done on the subject. Various groups have calculated that a minimal cell would require somewhere between 200 to 250 genes to exist and function. They made this calculation by what is known as the top-down approach. The aim was to simplify existing simple organisms to arrive at what is considered to be the minimal genome possible for the cell to exist. The idea is to then find a way to self-assemble such a minimal cell. Other biologists have taken a wider viewpoint and believe that it is not necessarily the case that the original cells were in the exact form that we know them today. The biologists who work on this path are taking the bottom-up approach. This group make the assumptions that originally what are referred to as proto-cells (e.g. a forerunner) existed. These cells may have been much, much smaller than bacteria and with much smaller genomes. A number of laboratories are currently working on building these proto-cells. They are making steady progress towards their goal of actually producing a functioning basic cell. A question that must be asked There is a very simple question that must be asked in the debate about whether God really did create the entire universe about six thousand years ago in a literal six day period. To my knowledge, this question appears to have never been thought about by either side of the debate. If it has, I have never read or heard about it.

19

20 God says that He has existed from everlasting past and will exist to everlasting in the future. He also says that time has no meaning to Him in the sense that we commonly understand time. The question then is simple. If God is eternal and time in our sense has no meaning to Him, then why would He have been in such a hurry to create the universe and all therein in just six literal days? This is especially strange when you consider that for eternity past the universe had not existed then hey-presto! In six days everything comes into being in essentially the form that we know today then the universe starts its journey on into eternity future, slowly but surely changing (evolving) from the Stone Age conditions 6000 years ago into unknown and currently unimaginable complexity in future ages to come. This idea of the sudden appearance of the completed universe in one stroke does not fit with the scientific knowledge of the age of the universe. Nor does it fit with the observations of life around us where we see things slowly evolve from one state to another becoming more complex as the changes progress. This includes not only biology, but also geological changes in the planet. It especially applies to events that we see happening in space. It also encompasses the slow evolution of the affairs of man from the Stone Age about 6,000 years ago right through until the present science age of mankind. Included in the affairs of mankind is the slow progressive unfolding of revelation in the Bible over the period of about the sixteen hundred years that it took for all the books in the Bible to be written. By comparison, it is clear that six days out of all of eternity is not even equivalent to one grain of sand on all the beaches on all the planets in the universe. It is utterly and totally insignificant! Nothing that we see in the world and universe around us or in history is characterised by a sudden appearance. Empires rise and fall over long periods of time. God himself is timeless. The idea then that God needed to act in an instant in time to create the completed universe is simply not consistent with the Bible or the observed world around us or a reasonable understanding of how God would act. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

20

21

Did God need a special act of creation for each different living organism?
Or Was God clever enough to use the laws of mathematics that He created to be able to generate an almost infinite variety of life forms from either a single, or maybe just a few original designs? How many special creations would have been required? Many people who hold to creationist views of a literal six day creation also believe that God had a special act of creation for each type of organism that exists. They refer to these original special creation organisms as baramin. The term was created in 1941 by a creationist called Frank Marsh. It is formed from the Hebrew words bara (create) and min (kind). The idea was based on the belief that God created organisms that could reproduce according to own their kind." It is unclear exactly how many baramin are supposed to exist in the creationist system. It started off with only four (4) general classifications. However, within each classification there were apparently very large numbers of separate types of organisms that would all have required their own special act of creation. The underlying reason for the idea of baramin is that creationism does not wish to believe in the single common ancestor of science. Yet the general concept is exactly the same all that the creationist concept has done is to cut the process short by a little bit in comparison to the science view. Creationism starts with a limited number of different types whereas, science starts with just a single common ancestor. In reality the idea of just a literal single organism that started off all life is, to say the least, quite fanciful. Science says that all life started in the ancient seas from a s ingle cell that formed as a result of the natural laws. While life certainly started in the seas by this method, the idea that only one cell formed that was the single common ancestor is quite plainly ludicrous. If the natural laws are setup to produce life, then there would have been huge numbers of prototype cells that formed in the sea. As we saw in the earlier chapter called Self-organising systems? Or do we need a Special Creation? we get variety in the formation of snowflakes. So it would almost certainly have been the case with the single common ancestor of science. In reality it would have been quite a number of cells all of which were slightly different to each other. In that respect, there is really not much difference between the creationist baramin and sciences single common ancestor . In the creationist system, individual baramin have changed over time by natural selection into many different species of organisms today all according to their own kind (e.g. cats, dogs, trees etc). The results today then show many different individual species of each kind such that we have many different species of cats and other types of organisms. Creationists however still hold to the same definition of a species as that of science. Namely, that a species is defined as that group of say, mice, that can interbreed with each other but not with other similar species of mice. This definition of a species however is a stumbling block for the creationists as they do not believe that this mechanism can lead to one species of organisms, say cats, changing into another species, say birds. The idea behind it is that natural selection causes a species to slowly change in order to adapt to changing circumstances in their 21

22 environment. Finally a point is reached where they are sufficiently different to the parent species that they can no longer interbreed. Although this is a valid explanation of how different species arise, it is generally held that this explanation cannot account for how a particular class of organisms change into another class of organisms say cats changing into birds. The simple explanation here is that each individual in a given species can interbreed with its parents. If this is traced back along the line of descent of the Tree of Life, then it can be clearly seen that the ancestors of a species today could and indeed would have interbred with earlier life forms along the way. Today the taxonomic system used in science to classify all organisms consists of eight major levels of classification. In descending order they are Domain (3 domains), Kingdom (6 kingdoms), Phylum (at least 53), Class (not specified but quite a number), Order (lots), Family (dozens), Genus (hundreds at least and possibly thousands) and Species (millions). Starting at the top level with Domain, the other descending levels are all sub-categories within each higher level of classification. In the end you have huge numbers of different distinct sets of organisms that cannot breed with other or even closely related groups. Taken to its logical conclusion then all, or at least most of these sets of organisms must have arisen by an act of special creation if the concept of baramin is correct. More to the point, these special acts of creation must have been occurring throughout history right up until today. It should be noted that there are no peer reviewed scientific articles confirming the existence of baramin. There is also no evidence that God is still continuing special acts of new creation today. In light of these facts, then how could God create the stupendous array of life forms that exist today (just on the earth alone) by starting with just one, or more likely, a few basic designs? Gods mechanism for creating huge diversity from a common ancestor God said that he does nothing without telling His people (Amos3:7) and He also said that mankind can see some of His ways in the world around us. (Romans 1:19-20). True to His word, mankind is now beginning to see how He accomplished the creation. God is subtle beyond our understanding and it has taken mankind a long time to begin to understand some of how God has worked in the creation of the unbelievable complexity and ever changing spectacular kaleidoscopic diversity of the universe. Nonetheless, science has begun to unravel the basic outline of creation. We will look at some of the evidence of how it appears that God has created such amazing variety from such simple beginnings in the next chapter. But before we look at that we need to look at the field of science that has revealed the apparent underlying mechanism of producing incredible variety and complexity from simple beginnings. This branch of science is known as Chaos theory. A good account of the underlying ideas can be found at the website shown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory. I need to state at the outset that we will only be looking at simple pictures in this chapter that illustrate the concepts that we need to understand Chaos theory. We will not be getting involved with the mathematics that underlies the theory. Fortunately it is a subject that is easy to put in plain words by the use of simple graphic images that explain the underlying ideas in the theory. There are three simple ideas that we have to become familiar with. These are the concepts of deterministic chaos, the continual iteration (repeating) of a process and the idea of a fractal We briefly look at look each one of these ideas below. 22

23 The concept of Chaos First we need a quick explanation of the term chaos as used in the theory. In most non-technical peoples mind the word chaos conjures up images where completely random and totally disorganised behaviour of whatever you are looking at reigns. The common idea of chaos is that there is no pattern to what you see and that it is impossible to predict what will happen. In Chaos theory we deal with the idea of deterministic chaos. This is quite different to the common idea of chaos. The underlying idea is shown in the picture on the right. Here I show a billiard table with a cylindrical object (grey) on it with the tracks of two different billiard balls (red & blue). The picture was produced on a precision Computer Aided Drawing system so that dimensions and angles are accurate to 12 decimal places. Most people know that when something reflects (or bounces) off a surface it obeys certain rules. Namely, that the angle of incidence that the incoming object makes with the surface that it reflects from is equal to the angle of refection of the object. These two angles are measured from a line that is at exactly 90 degrees to the surface at the point of contact. In the case of a cylindrical object, the line is the one drawn from the point of contact to the exact center of the cylinder. This automatically bisects the incoming and outgoing angles. The angles of the coloured traces shown are all drawn strictly to 12 decimal places accuracy. The picture above shows what is known as a non-linear system that has feedback applied to it. The idea of feedback is a critical concept in the development of all life forms and indeed just about every other sort of control mechanism that you can think of. Everybody is familiar with the humble thermostat on an air heating or a cooling system such as we have in our houses. The thermostat is the feedback element. It feeds back the actual temperature of the air in the room to the heating or cooling controller. In a heating system it measures the air temperature in the room and says. We are coming up to temperature so turn off the heating element. As the air temperature in the room drops, it says to the controller, We are dropping below the preset temperature so turn on the heating element. In the billiard table and ball example the feedback on each bounce of the ball from the curved cylinder on the table is the incoming angle of incidence that the ball makes with the curved cylinder on the table. If we make some idealistic assumptions about the billiard table example above such as perfectly elastic collisions, no friction, a flat and level table, perfectly round balls and cylinder and no other outside influences, then what you see in the picture is what would happen in the real world. The two traces start out with exactly 2.8000 degrees difference in the starting trajectory of the red and blue balls. After only three bounces off the central cylinder the balls end up on opposite sides of the grey cylinder and travelling in opposite directions. As can be seen, at first the paths dont vary by much from each other. This is particularly the case when the balls reflect off the straight (linear) surface at the bottom of the table. However a very different picture emerges when the balls reflect off the curved surface (non-linear) of the cylinder. This causes 23

24 an amplification of the differences in the trajectories. As the pictures shows the trajectories of the two balls become very different very quickly. You can image what would happen if the table was bigger and there were more curved obstacles on the table. The further the balls travelled and the more curved objects that they bounced off, the more chaotic the course of each ball would appear to be. Irrespective of how chaotic the paths of the two balls appear to be provided you fired each new ball at exactly the same initial angle then the ball would follow the exact same apparently chaotic path as the earlier balls. This behaviour is what is termed deterministic chaos. By this is meant that the path is determined by the starting condition. However it must be noted that this is true only if nothing else alters along the path and providing that the initial conditions are the same. Of course if something alters along the path of the ball, then the trajectory will change. But this change is determined exactly by the initial contact conditions at the point of the change. It is still a totally deterministic (predictable) course that the ball follows even if it appears to be chaotic One point should be noted here. Deterministic chaos only occurs in systems that are described by a non-linear equation. A non-linear equation has one or more terms in it that have a variable of degree 2 or higher e.g. 4X2 + 9 = 127. This could be seen easily in the picture of the billiard table where the chaotic behaviour occurred only when the ball bounced off the curved non-linear surface of the grey cylinder. The actual path of the reflected ball is determined by the angle of incidence of the incoming ball and this varies in a very complex, but still predictable way that varies each time the ball bounces off the curved surface. What happens when we repeatedly carry out a given procedure? Everyone is familiar with the idea of the word reiteration which means to go over the same thing again and again, usually with respect to saying or writing something. In mathematics and computing the word iteration means much the same except that it generally refers to repeating a process or a piece of computer program code repeatedly. The intention of doing this is to obtain a new calculated result at each iteration of the process because of feedback that has been built into the iteration loop. Many people will ask why this is important in a discussion of how God has very probably worked in order to bring out huge variety and complexity of life from very simple beginnings. The answer to this lies in two different ideas. First is the fact that life has replicated itself countless billions of times since life first appeared on the earth. Each new cycle of life can be looked at as being one iteration in an endlessly repeating cycle. Each new generation of an individual life form (say, a rabbit) has a genetic makeup that has been influenced by its immediate predecessor . For instance, black rabbits wont survive long in a yellow sandy environment as they would stand out against the yellow sandy background and hence would be easily seen by a predator such as a fox or a dingo. The rabbits whose fur colour most closely matched the background would be more likely to survive and breed and so pass on their genes to their young. In this scenario we have feedback from the environment (by natural selection) that is influencing the local species of rabbits. It should be noted that we can and do have other sorts of feedback into the genome that can produce radical changes in the rabbit. This would include any viral infections that happened to affect the sperm or egg cells of the rabbit. These changes, whether good, bad or 24

25 neutral will then form part of the genetic makeup of any future offspring. Using the billiard table example we can easily see that if a system with a non-linear element in it is being iterated with feedback applied to it then such a system can very rapidly change into something quite different to that from which it started. We will look at much more amazing examples of this sort of process in the next chapter. The second idea involves the concept of having a non-linear set of terms in the equation, or process that is being iterated. In a system that involved life forms this would involve a non-linear response from the genome of the organism to any changes that were introduced from feedback from the environment. Consider the following two examples of non-linear genetic responses. Factory farming of chickens requires that the birds achieve maximum body weight in the minimum time. In order to achieve this, the birds need to eat as much as possible each day. However the ability to eat larger quantities relies on the birds being able to reject the extra heat generated from eating more food. The ability to radiate heat is directly affected by the rate at which the birds grow feathers. More feathers means less radiation of heat. There is great variability in the growth rate of feathers on different chickens because of genetic variability. When food intake is graphed against the number of days of feeding, some birds show a straight line (linear) response, e.g. they eat equal amounts each day (corrected for the weight of bird). Other birds show a curved (non-linear) response where the food consumption per day begins to drop due to faster feather growth which reduces their ability to radiate the extra heat from digesting the food. In this example the feedback parameter is the temperature of each chicken in relation to the environment. We all know that most plants need light to grow and survive. A plant perceives light through a number of different types of photoreceptor cells in the plant. These photoreceptor cells are sensitive to the intensity of the light, its wavelength (colour) as well as the direction the light is coming from. In any given plant, each different type of photoreceptor cell will respond differently to each of the variables of intensity, wavelength and direction. This is a result of the genetic makeup of each individual plant. As a result some plants will show a straight line (linear) response in its growth rate for equal increments of white light (which is a mixture of all colours) intensity increase. Other plants of the same species, under the exact same conditions, will show a curved (non-linear) growth rate for equal increments of white light intensity increase. The growth rates may in fact either increase or decrease depending on the actual light levels concerned and the plants involved. In this example the feedback parameter is the level of each of the many different growth chemicals that result from the response of each of the photoreceptor cells in the plant as they measure the characteristics of the light in the surrounding environment. We now have two examples, one from the animal world and one from the plant world, that show how the genome of organisms demonstrate that they frequently contain nonlinear elements. In both these cases, and countless others, natural selection will select the organisms best suited to each environment. But an important point needs to be noted here and it is this. Whatever the actual type of feedback (temperature, chemical, viral infection etc.) involved in the natural selection process, the response by the organism to the feedback is more often than not, non-linear. As we have already pictorially seen in the billiard table example, any system that has feedback into a system that has a non-linear (curved) element in it, produces very strange results. In the next chapter we will look at pictures that show far more, interesting, amazing and 25

26 strange results than the billiard table example. That was just an easy and simple introduction to the subject. If by some chance the feedback influences the germ cells of the organism, then these changes are passed on permanently to future offspring. You can very rapidly get huge differences appearing in systems such as these. A picture of an iterated system and what do we mean by a strange attractor? This is as close to mathematics as we will get, but dont turn off just yet it is just a simple description of the concept and some pictures. So far we have talked about initial conditions and non-linear responses. Now we have just one final concept about iterated systems to cover and that is the subject of attraction points in an iterated system. In any dynamic (moving) system that evolves from one form to another over many cycles of the system we find that the system is attracted to certain numbers or states. The actual point of attraction is very dependent on both the form of the system (e.g. its describing equation) and the initial values used at the start of the process. To demonstrate the concept we will look at a very simple example to see exactly what happens. Then we will look at a couple of pictures that graphically shows the idea. We begin with the very simple equation that was originally used to investigate how populations of insects and animals grow and shrink over time. It is a non-linear function as it has the variable X in it which is multiplied by itself each time the equation is evaluated. It also has feedback in it because the ending value of the variable X in each cycle of the evaluation becomes the new value f or X in the next cycle of the evaluation. The simple equation is shown below. Let X = a constant value (A) * X * (1 X) Now to see what happens we will run a very simple computer program that cycles through 15 iterations (cycles) of the equation. The simplified program looks like this Start Initialise the value for the variable A to some desired value Initialise the value for the variable X to some desired value Loop fifteen times through the code below X = A * X * (1-X) Print the value of X End loop End program In order to demonstrate both the existence of deterministic chaos in this equation as well as the existence of attractor points I will choose some specific values of both the constant value A as well as the starting value of X. For the value of X I will use 0.400000. I will vary the value of the constant number A using three different values which will remain the same through all fifteen evaluations. Some surprising things will happen. Looking at the table on the next page we see in the left hand column that we started with the constant value of A = 2.0000. After two iterations the final value of X is attracted to the value of 0.50000 and it stays at that value from then on.

26

27 In the middle column we start the process off with the value of A= 3.236067. We find that the value of X jumps around randomly until the ninth cycle when it enters into a stable two-valued attractor orbit that repeatably oscillates between the values of 0.80902 and 0.50000 Finally in the column on the right hand side where we started with a value for A of 4.00000 we find that the value of X just jumps around in an apparently random manner. In reality of course these random values of X in both the middle column up to row nine and all of the right hand column are far from being random. They are examples of deterministic chaos. They look to be random, but in fact they follow a strictly deterministic course that is set (determined) entirely by the initial values of the constant number A and the variable X in the equation. Anyone who sets up the calculation program on their computer (a spreadsheet is the easiest way) and experiments with changing the starting values of both X and A will very quickly discover that minute changes (as low as 0.000001) can produce dramatically different successive values of X N X 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 The value of the constant A 2.00000 3.236067 4.00000 0.40000 0.40000 0.40000 0.48000 0.77666 0.96000 0.49920 0.56133 0.15360 0.50000 0.79684 0.52003 0.50000 0.52387 0.99840 0.50000 0.80717 0.00641 0.50000 0.50368 0.02547 0.50000 0.80897 0.9928 0.50000 0.50009 0.35768 0.50000 0.80902 0.91898 0.50000 0.50000 0.29782 0.50000 0.80902 0.83650 0.50000 0.50000 0.54707 0.50000 0.80902 0.99114 0.50000 0.50000 0.03514 0.50000 0.80902 0.13561

In the above simple example we have now shown how the initial values of the variables in a very simple non-linear equation that is iterated with feedback into the equation can produce very strange results with the output values. The demonstration also showed how certain values of the output can act as attractor points that the calculations will converge to as the process is repeated over many cycles. It was also shown that the number of attractor values is not limited to just one value. A given equation can have many such attractor values which it will cycle randomly between. Below is shown a picture of what is known as the Lorentz Attractor after Edward Lorentz who discovered it in 1963 when he was working on an investigation of the behaviour of chaotic flows in fluids. It is sometimes known as the Butterfly Attractor because of its characteristic shape that looks like a butterfly. If you look at the picture on the right you will see that there are two ends to the partial blue trace of the Lorentz Attractor. This is because when I made the trace using a freely available program called ChaosPro I only completed a few orbits so that the development of the path can be clearly seen. The actual path is formed by joining up the huge number of individual points which are calculated from each cycle of the original Lorentz equation in the same way that we calculated the X value on each row of the table 27

28 above. As the trace shows, there are two attractor points that the path continually circles around as the system continues to evolve over time. I have marked these two attractors with red crosses. In fact these two attractor points are what are known as strange attractors as opposed to the simple point -like attractors that we found in the table of values for our experimental program on the previous page. Strange attractors are much more interesting and relevant to our discussion of how God probably made such an amazing variety of life forms that we know today from very simple initial beginnings maybe even a single common ancestor. The simplest explanation of a strange attractor is that it is a point of attraction for the calculated values in a system that is evolving over time in a deterministically chaotic manner. Another characteristic that can be used to describe a strange attractor is that the attractor is a fractal. A brief idea and description of a fractal is looked at in the next section The last point to note in the idea of a deterministically chaotic system is that the strange attractors are not usually found in equations that only use the simple real number system. Real numbers are the set of numbers that can be used to count and measure things. They include all the numbers that can be expressed as a decimal quantity, such as 1324.823122147 There are however other types of numbers. The first type of interest to us are the complex numbers which are two dimensional numbers that are used to describe points and lines on a plane (e.g. a flat surface). The other type of numbers of interest to us is the quaternion numbers. These are four dimensional numbers that are used to describe points and lines in a three dimensional space. It is in these two systems of numbers (and other higher order systems) that strange attractors are normally found. We will look at some fractal images in the next chapter that have strange attractors and see the incredible beauty, complexity and remarkable similarity to natural life forms around us that these systems can and do exhibit.. What does it mean to say that something is a fractal? The last topic in this introduction to the real world around us and the subject of creation is to explain the concept of the wo rd fractal and to see how it relates to the everyday world that we see around us. The general idea of a fractal is at one level very simple to describe and understand. At a more general mathematical level it is very difficult to describe. We are only concerned with the simple description of fractals. The term was first introduced in 1975 by the French mathematician Benot Mandelbrot. He proposed the idea of a fractional dimension as a way of describing and coping with the problems of measuring and describing actual real world things. The word was then simply shortened to fractal What led to the idea was the problem that he was studying on how to measure objects at different scales in the real world. He posed the question of How long is the coastline of Britain? Now everyone who has ever been to the beach knows that a coastline is a very irregularly shaped thing and this leads to a very curious result. The length that you measure depends only on how long your measuring stick is If you look at an aerial map of a coastline it shows many indentations and curves along its length. If it was a big map, and you simply took a ruler and measured around the 28

29 outline by laying the ruler end-to-end around the map then you would get some sort of estimate of the total length of the coastline. Now we will go into the real world and try this. The first thing that we discover is that the length of the measuring stick has an important bearing on the actual measurement that you would get. This is shown in the picture on the right hand side. The shorter you make the measuring stick the more closely you can follow the small scale variations in the actual profile. Clearly the shorter your measuring stick is, the closer to the actual measurement of the true length of the perimeter of the coast, or any other fractal object becomes. If you multiply the ruler length value ( R) in the picture above by the number of ruler lengths (L) around the profile then you will find that the total length of the profile becomes longer as the length of the ruler gets shorter. E.g. R3.0*L2 = 6, R2.5*L3 = 7.5, R1.5*L7 = 10.5, R1.0*L17 =17.0 We return now to the problem of measuring how long the coastline of a small island in a lake is. We will use a lake so that we dont have the complic ation of the tide rising and falling and so affecting the length of circumference. Imagine that to start with you used a one meter long stick and laying it end-to-end around the waterline, you measured the length of the coast along the actual water line as being 1000 meters. Now take a measuring stick that is only one tenth of a meter long (0.100 meter) and use this to follow along all the small ripples and in-and-out curves along the water line. You would probably find that the total length of the coastline has now doubled to say 2000 meters as you can now measure the shorter deviations in the profile. Now imagine that you get a smaller measuring stick of say one millimetre long and use this to follow around every small pebble and grain of sand. The length will now greatly increase to many thousands of metres. As you use a smaller and smaller ruler, the length of the coastline will increase towards infinity. This then leads us into the idea of what is meant by the term fractional dimension We usually represent a point as a dot. However we understand that the dot is only a representation of a point and that a point itself is only a mathematical concept that has no dimensions associated with it no length, no width and no height. Therefore a 0-D object such as a point has a dimension of 0.0 A line has one dimension only its length. It has no width and no height, but infinite length. Therefore a 1-D object such as a line has a dimension of 1.0 A plane such as a flat tabletop has two dimensions an infinite length and width, with no depth. Therefore a 2-D object such as a plane has a dimension of 2.0 If we next consider a cube, then this has three dimensions, length, width, and depth. Clearly then a 3-D object such as a cube has a dimension of 3.0 Fractals can have fractional (or fractal) dimension such as a dimension of 1.6 or 2.4. How can we image a fractional dimension? Well if we take a 2-D object such as a sheet of paper we start off with a plane with a dimension of 2.0. Now we screw the sheet of paper up into a ball. It clearly is no longer a plane surface with a dimension of 2.0 but 29

30 neither is it a solid cube that has a dimension of 3.0. What we have is a very crumpled object that is somewhere between a 2-D plane and a 3-D cube hence it has a fractional dimension that lies somewhere between 2.0 and 3.0. The exact value doesnt matter for this discussion and in fact is very difficult to measure or calculate. Now we can give an intuitive description of what a fractal is. A fractal is an irregular or fragmented geometric shape which can be divided into smaller parts and where each of these smaller parts looks approximately similar to the whole object. This selfsimilarity is completely independent of the scale that you are examining. In other words, they look similar, no matter how close you zoom in. Fractals often have all of the following features It has a well defined geometric structure at all scales (magnification) It appears to be approximately self-similar no matter at what scale you view it at. Its shape is too irregular to be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometric language such as a line, circle, square, cone etc It has a simple and recursive definition where recursive means a series of repeated applications of the same (or similar) objects or images. Because fractals appear similar at all levels of magnification, they are often considered to be infinitely complex. Many aspects of the natural world show that they are very close approximations to fractals. This includes clouds, snowflakes, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines and many plants such as Pine trees, various ferns and cauliflowers and broccoli plus just about every other example from nature that you can name. Generating a fractal There are two parts to a computer generated fractal. First, you have the equation or database that the fractal generation process uses to generate the fractal image itself. The exact form that is used depends on the fractal generation process that is used. It also has non-linear elements in it.It should be clearly understood that the equation or the database does not contain detailed instructions on what should be generated. It is simply a set of information that will be used by the second part of the process, the generator, to create the fractal shape. The actual generator that uses the equation or database can be one of a number of different general types. The point to note here is that the generator does not contain a specific set of instructions such as draw this line here and draw that circle there. Rather the code in the generator is more general and uses a set of parameters that makes a decision on the actual shapes and colours of each point based on how the calculated value of each point in the image is behaving. There is a lot information available on the internet for anyone interested in how fractal images are formed, so we wont be dealing with that it in this book. The important point in the above description is quite simple. You have a creative process that is very complex, and this creative process uses a database, or genome to determine exactly what type of organism will result from the creative process. Because we are dealing with a system that goes through huge numbers of cycles and because it is a deterministically chaotic system that is critically dependent on the initial values, then the system evolves over time as it goes through each cycle . Very small changes even minute changes in the initial values of the system can very 30

31 rapidly lead to very different shapes as we saw with the billiard table example. We will look at far more dramatic examples in the next chapter Observations of the Natural World This is exactly what we see in the natural world. We see very simple organisms in ages past that have changed into much more advanced organisms today. And they appear to have done this by the same process as fractals are generated (e.g. iteration of a nonlinear system). At this stage we dont know exactly how the creative process works that forms the shape of a tomato plant different from an oak tree, or a mouse different from a human being. What we do know is that it is a two part process the actual mechanism that reads the genome and then builds the organism (e.g. the fractal generator mechanism) then there is the genome itself that contains the instructions for the generator to use (e.g. the fractal equation or database) The fractal iteration formula as the genome of an organism As an example of how very small changes in the database (genome) can lead to different species fairly quickly, look at the two fractal images of the ferns on the right hand side. We can easily see that we have two quite different species of ferns. However, in the chart directly below the picture, I show the database (e.g. the genome) that was used to generate the two different species of ferns. As the table shows the differences in the fractal genome of the two different species is very small yet we have two distinctly different species. Other small changes in the fractal genome will produce significantly different species of fractal ferns again. Parameters for broad frond fern
0 0.85 0.09 -0.09 0 0.02 -0.28 0.28 0 -0.02 0.30 0.3 0.25 0.83 0.11 0.09 0 0 0 0 -0.14 1 0.6 0.7 0.02 0.84 0.07 0.07 0 0.95 0.035 -0.04

Parameters for thin frond fern

0 0.005 -0.2 0.2 0 -0.005 0.16 0.16 0.25 0.93 0.04 0.04 0 -0.002 -0.09 0.083 -0.4 0.5 -0.02 0.12 0.02 0.84 0.07 0.07

The picture on the right shows a 3-D fractal broccoli that was generated using quaternion (4D) numbers, and also using a different form of fractal generator to that used for the fractal ferns above. The important point here is that using quaternion numbers and a suitable fractal generator we produce 3-D forms that look remarkably similar to objects that we find in the natural world.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 31

32

Observations of the Natural World

Or Is it just coincidence that science has now discovered fractal mathematics and that the shape of most things in the world are fractal in their form and properties Animals that undergo radical changes to their bodies during their lifetime As we look around at the unbelievable tapestry of different life forms in the natural world, we wonder how they were formed. We then look at the large and small scale details of the earth itself and then on out to the structure of the physical universe as a whole and we see a unifying similarity between the many different physical forms of life around us, the earth itself and universe at large. The one thing that virtually everything in creation shares is that its geometric shape is best described as being a fractal. Very little in the natural world can be described in terms of Euclidean geometry such as lines, circles, cubes or cones. Just about everything has an irregular and roughened shape associated with it that cant be described by Euclidian geometric concepts. As we saw in the last chapter, these natural geometric forms are described by the new branch of mathematics known as fractal geometry. Just some examples are clouds, cauliflowers, the bark on trees, the trees themselves, coastlines, the body shapes of most animals and insects, the shape of galaxies and the distribution of galaxies throughout the universe. The list could go on, but you get the picture. Many people have difficulty believing that the complex animals that we see today could have arisen from much simpler ancestors. The commonly held view of many people who do not accept evolution is that while natural selection can make minor changes to the physical characteristics of say, to the beaks of Darwins finches that he studied on the Galapagos Islands, they will still be birds, and not dogs. They dont believe that the body plan of the animals can change to make them a different ty pe of animal. In other words they dont believe that evolution can cause a change of taxonomic class from say a bird (Class = Aves) to that of a dog (Class = Mammalia). I have shown the taxonomic classification from the last chapter again for easy reference Taxonomy classifications in descending order are Domain (top level), Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species. However to hold this belief is to ignore common evidences in the natural world around us. We will look at two common examples of radical changes in life forms. The first case looks at the radical changes that occur in both the body shapes and functions and the critical life sustaining requirements during the life cycle of the frog. A frog goes through five stages of development that appear to be five different animals. These are:Embryo: tadpole still in the egg. Front legs break through: beginning of the development of the rear limbs. Tadpole: Lives entirely in water Start of pulmonary respiration: the beginning of respiration with the lungs Tadpole frog: Lives in water but can breathe air. Adult frog: Breaths air.

Illustration from Wikimedia 32

33 The second example of a life form that undergoes a radical change in body shape, appearance and function is that of a butterfly as it goes through its life cycle. It starts off as a caterpillar that eats vegetation. It then forms a chrysalis around itself and the caterpillar inside undergoes a complete metamorphosis into a beautiful butterfly. This is shown by the picture of the caterpillar form (LHS) of the Monarch butterfly on the RHS. It is worth looking at the Lorentz Attractor again that we covered near the beginning of the last chapter (Did God need a special act of creation for each different living organism?). You will immediately understand why it is sometimes called the Butterfly Attractor. Anybody who came across fossils of any of the five different stages in the life cycle of the frog would think that they were looking at five different creatures as the body shapes are quite different. The habitats can also be quite different when you consider that some frogs live in trees and cane toads live on land. To all intents and purposes the Laval stages (tadpoles) and the adult frogs are two entirely different animals. The frogs have evolved through intermediate forms from a tadpole to a frog and this all takes place during a single life-time. The same thing occurs with the caterpillar that evolves into a butterfly during the course of just one life-time. In both cases of frogs and butterflies, the final creature is more advanced than the earlier form. There are many other creatures that undergo such transformations during their life-cycle. But these two well known cases alone are more than sufficient to firmly establish that simple life forms evolve into more complex forms within a single life cycle. They are able to do this because these major evolutionary changes in their bodies are pre-programmed into them from the start of the existence of each individual in the species. Have you ever wondered how the shape of all living things comes about? We have seen that caterpillars and tadpoles have programmed into their genome the instructions that cause them to evolve into butterflies and frogs. But have you ever wondered how the shape of each animal is created and controlled? Why for instance are all humans the same basic shape and all chimpanzees have their own characteristic shape? This is all the more strange when analysis of human DNA shows that it is not much different to that of a chimpanzees, in fact about 98% - 99% the same. Even more startling is the fact that the DNA of a mouse is about 97.5% the same as humans yet they are radically different in shape to us. Also have you ever wondered how the shape of say, your leg, is controlled? Specifically, if you had an accident that tore a small lump of flesh out of your leg, then the natural healing process of the body will grow scar tissue to fill up the void left in your leg. But how does the body know when to stop growing more scar tissue as the level reaches the original surface of your leg before the accident? Clearly the shape of a body is controlled by the genetic structure of the type of body in question. Yet, given the remarkable DNA similarities between say a mouse and a 33

34 human (about 2.5% difference only) it is clear that the mechanism that codes for the body shape must be relatively simple . The question is how can simple coding control complex shapes? More to the point, how could this simple code bring about changes over time that produce increasingly complex shapes that are so remarkably stable over huge periods of time? Fractal mathematics as the mechanism that controls shapes in the natural world In earlier chapters (Choosing to be a Christian section on Free will and also Did God need a special act of creation for each different living organism? section on The concept of Chaos) we have looked at the concept of randomness and have seen that it really does not exist. Everything unfolds along a predetermined path and the actual path it follows is determined precisely by the exact initial conditions that existed at the instant that the process started. Now I dont pretend to know exactly how it started or the underlying mathematics that have guided the evolution of the universe since the first instant of the Big Bang of creation. However, the shape of virtually everything in the natural world around us is clearly fractal. By this is meant that it is not made up of straight lines, circles, cubes or cones but rather rough shapes that have fractional dimensions. We know that fractals have two parts to their creation first there is an equation of some sort that describes the mathematical space that the fractals exis t in then there is the mechanism that actually generates the fractal forms. In this section we are only interested in showing how very simple mathematical equations lead to extremely complex and beautiful forms that change slowly over many iterations of the process and then stabilize into particular species of forms in particular regions of the mathematical space in which they are generated. Similarity with the natural world and the fractal images of the Mandelbrot Set The Mandelbrot Set is named after Benot Mandelbrot and it is a set of points in the complex number plane (X&Y). It is a very simple equation defined as Z = Z2+ C. In the equation, Z is a complex number with a real and an imaginary component . Complex numbers are usually written in the form of A(real) + B(imaginary). The letter C represents a constant number that does not change during the repeated iteration process. Z starts out set to a particular number e.g. the initial conditions for the process. Each iteration of the equation creates a new value of Z that is equal to the old Z squared plus the constant C. This new value of Z is plotted onto the complex number plane according to a procedure that does not concern us here. Anyone who is interested can look up the details on the internet. Below are two pictures of the Mandelbrot set that resulted using the starting value of Z shown for each of the two pictures.

Z = (1.71111 + 0.0)

34

35 As the two pictures of the Mandelbrot Set (one on the previous page and the one of the RHS) shows, we get very different shapes simply by changing one of the initial numbers (the real value) in the complex number Z. This shows how complexity can be built up in a form using very simple and quite insignificant changes in value. However, there is something much more interesting in the figures shown in the Mandelbrot Set. The shapes produced by the Set evolve as the Set changes over time and as you zoom down deeper into the detail of the fractal edges of the Set. Z= (0.0 + 0.0) It is a remarkable fact that even using such a simple equation as Z = Z2+ C the resulting images show shapes that resemble real life forms and other natural features of the world around us. Now nobody seriously suggests that God used the Mandelbrot equation to generate the world around us. However one thing is clear, and that is that the shape of everything in the natural world is best described by fractal geometry. This includes the large scale structure of galaxies and their distribution throughout space. The rest of this chapter has a number of pictures that shows a real world scene and alongside it is shown a fractal image of a similar object. All of the fractal images have been taken from the Mandelbrot Set only. If you used other equations and fractal generation processes you can get many more matches with the real natural world. The intention is simply to show that you can get unbelievable beauty and complexity of shape from very simple equations and that these shapes as crude as they are have an uncanny resemblance to the natural world around us. And just as importantly, this beauty and the shapes evolved naturally out of the equation as it went through many iterations. This is almost certainly the same way life evolved from a si mple equation that God set in motion at the creation of the universe and everything has run on rails since then. Of course the generating equation that God used is more subtle and complex than mankind currently understands. But I believe that the evidence is now beginning to show that God is indeed the Master Mathematician of Creation.

A cutaway section through a Nautilus shell compared to one of the Archimedean spirals that are found in the Mandelbrot Set

35

36

Bug found in the Mandelbrot Set

Cyclops (zooplankton)

Below are ten separate pictures of the Mandelbrot Set that are the result of different numbers of iteration of the equation. As will be clearly seen, the shape starts out as a simple circle with no fractal edges to it. Each successive iteration of the function produces a more complex basic shape. As the number of iterations increase the fractal edges begin to appear. The deeper that you zoom into the fractal edges the more complex the embedded shapes become as the number of iterations increases. This is the exact analogue of what happens in evolution in the natural world. As the number of generations increases (e.g. the number of iterations of the basic function increases) so we see progressively more complex shapes and life forms appearing. These shapes were hidden in the original equation and only become apparent as the number of iterations increase. However they do tend to stabilise after a given number of iterations. This is exactly what we see happen in the natural world where once a basic life form appears (e.g. monkeys) then we see various species of monkey emerge, but the basic type (monkey) still persists in a recognizable form.

36

37

On the next two pages we actually zoom down in the fractal details in the Mandelbrot Set and look at fractal images that appear to bear a striking resemblance to actual life forms and features of the natural world.

Leafy Sea Dragon

Fractal version of a Leafy Sea Dragon (Mandelbrot Set)

Aerial view of Fjords in Norway

3D Fractal image from Mandelbrot Set showing remarkable similarity to actual fjords

37

38

Elephant

Fractal version of an Elephant trunk (Mandelbrot Set)

Fractal Lightning (Mandelbrot Set)

Real Lightning

Fractal Galaxy (Mandelbrot Set)

The Grand Spiral Galaxy (NASA)

38

39 Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics A partial 3-D map of the fractal distribution of galaxies in space. The lines show where the galaxies are located. Some very large and bright galaxies can be seen embedded in the various lines

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ END +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

39